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Mustang History
In the early days of combat for the P-51, a few weaknesses were discovered. English pilots often left their planes out at night in order to be ready for an emergency call to fly up and meet enemy attacks. England had a superb early warning system consisting of a radar system sophisticated enough to calculate altitude and number of approaching enemy planes. They then scrambled small airbases to equally meet the threat. When the English pilots put pressure to the oil coolers with stiff cold oil, problems developed. Thus, a newly designed oil cooler had to be made.
While strafing low-altitude targets, it was discovered that the scoop, underneath the plane, which housed the oil cooler, would pick up small debris capable of puncturing the cooler, which, in turn, would cause oil to leak out. Once gone, lack of oil caused engine failure, and the plane would go down.
To counteract these weaknesses, aircraft engineer James Sullivan redesigned the oil cooler such that the oil came in at a different angle, to handle stiff, cold oil, and then divided the oil cooler into several compartments containing spring valves that would close and seal off a compartment if it were to lose pressure. These modifications were successful.
While the Army Air Corps was testing the P-51 with the new Merlin engine, they discovered that the plane performed much better. With a better engine that had a superior supercharger, the plane went a whopping 437mph, and was nicknamed the "Mustang" for its speed. In addition to the more advantageous fighter characteristics of being faster, more powerful, with a higher ceiling, the Mustang consumed about ½ of the fuel used by a Pratt & Whitney R-2800 radial engine that powered the current P-47 fighter, which had a very short range. These winning traits began to make the Mustang a very popular idea as the new superfighter for the AAF.
When the US joined the war in 1941, the Army Air Corps took on a plan called "strategic daylight bombing." This meant that B-17 heavy bombers would take to the German skies in broad daylight so that they could see specific military targets (war production facilities) and bomb that target only. The B-17's did have armament, but were a lesser match to the Luftwaffe fighters that swarmed in on them with 20mm cannons blazing. These attacks, on average, downed 20% (1 of every 5) of bombers on each mission. This meant that 10 men would face death or imprisonment, greatly decreasing morale among B-17 airmen (see the 1949 film "12 o'clock high" w/gregory peck). The large, non-aerodynamic gas-guzzling P-47 fighters of that time were simply too inefficient to escort bombers all the way to the target, fight, and return. They simply couldn't - they would run out of gas.
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